[thelist] developer ethics?

[Eöl]

--- David Kutcher <david_kutcher at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Wow, that was a bit of animosity early in the
> morning from a lurker.

:) .  Yep I normally lurk but occasional speak.

> > If it doesnt' directly involve you or
> > your corporation...why the hell do you care?  By
> > pointing out errors, you gain nothing but
> animosity
> > from the contractor (who btw works in your field,
> > something you don't want).  The corporation isn't
> > going to pay you and neither is the contractor.
>
> In general, I believe it sours the atmosphere in
> which we do work if a customer is charged a large
sum of money and is handed shoddy results from a
> "professional".  Most customers know nothing about
> web design and development except for their
first-hand experiences or information they've been
told by friends and colleagues.  I thought it was up
to us, the
> professionals in the field, to set examples and to
> educate clients.

I don't necessarily agree with this one.  Like *all*
job fields, there are uneducated and uncaring workers
that could care less about the job and only care about
the moeny.  That doesn't sour the atmosphere at all
though.  Going to use furniture repair for example
(mainly because I just got a chair fixed, but anybody
can think of numerious examples in the whole entire
service industry).  Well I find out later from a
friend of mine, that I was overcharge by 100%, could
have got it fixed for half that had I looked around
and talked to some people (networking).  Does this
look bad upon the WHOLE ENTIRE furniture repair
profession..nope.  Do I blame other repair guys for
not calling me on the phone and telling me the guy is
shoddy, nope.  I blame myself for not networking and
researching.

This is the same example as the orginal post.  If a
client gets shoddy service, they  are not going to
blame they entire web developement field, they are
going to blame that contractor (and maybe the guy that
hired him).  While sure it is our responsibility to
educate clients and produce professional work, it is
also our responsibility to do this in OUR WORK and
with OUR current or prospective clients.  It is not
(professionally or ethically) our responsibility to
notify non-clients of bad designers especially when we
are not involved in the issue nor do we know all the
facts.

>
> This isn't about pay.  This is about ethical
> obligations. (hence the title
> of the thread)

Well as a contractor or employee, its always about pay
:) .  But to run with what you said above, I
personally feel ethics apply to me and my own (my
work, my clients, things involved with me), not
society or people I am not involved with.  I see no
ethically reason I should email microsoft right now
and tell them that whoever coded
http://support.microsoft.com is a bad designer and
should be fired since it doesn't work in Mozilla/NS6.
If we had an ethical obligation to report bad work to
employers buy employees/contractors that we are not
involved with, thats all we would do.  Hell, I could
spent 24/7 for a good couple years doing this and I am
pretty sure we all could.

> > Web designers piss me off all the time with bad
> code,
> > but that the way life works.  Unless you are
> offering
> > to teach them or fix the problems for free, stay
> out
> > of it.
>
> Well, that's what this thread has been alluding to.
> Beyond teaching the
> individual, you can educate the client.
> Certification is one way... not
> that I necessarily agree with it.  There used to be
> guilds to handle this
> sort of thing in the old days, to "regulate" an
> otherwise dispersed group of
> craftsmen with no oversite.

I believe in networking.  Guilds are nice (still works
for certain fields, carpentry/plumbings/electricians)
but problem is people just don't join them.  Plus
can't say I have seen many techical guilds with real
power (all guilds with power I have seen are blue
collar jobs).  I am agreeing with your on the
certification, useless.  I come across MCSE's all the
time that can't even run ADS on a BIND9.2 server or
even tell me what type of authentication w2k ddns
client use to or even what a zone / A, NS, CNAME
record is.  Networking is where its at.  Seemed to
have worked for thousands of years, no reason why it
would break down today.

> > Eöl (who attempts to stay of others business and
> > expects them to do the same)
>
> That's all well and good, but if asked for your
> opinion, what would you say?
>
> David
> --

Eöl (who is more awake down but my personal opinion is
still ethically: mind your own business and don't try
and *save* me or mine :)


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